The Gang of Four
‘Put your foot down!’
‘I am doing! It’s these bloody country lanes!’
‘You’ve got four minutes before “part three” gets sliced!’
‘What’s our ETA for the field?’
‘Four minutes!’ replied Michael.
‘Shit!’
Russell accelerated the Bentley into a blind corner and hoped for the best.
‘Mind the cyclists!’
Russell narrowly avoided them and kept the speed high for the straight that appeared ahead but he was then forced to slow again as the narrow road wound itself around a small copse.
‘We’re not going to get there in time. Take the next turning on the left! There!!’
‘That’s just a track!’
‘Take it!’
Russell sped the Bentley off the tarmac road and onto a small loose-stone track that bisected a recently harvested barley field. As the car sped over a low rise in the centre of the field the far side became visible.
‘Oh shit, there’s a closed gate! Should I smash through it!?’
‘Do it!’
The metal gate flew off its hinges and over the car, narrowly missing the windscreen and the heads of Russell and Michael. Ahead, in the next field – lay the beast.
‘Where’s the crop circle!?’
‘Just beyond that!’
‘We’ll never intercept in time!’
‘We just need to distract the driver…’At that moment Michael suddenly leapt onto the bonnet of the car; he fired what appeared to be a lightning bolt at the combine harvester and it promptly stopped dead. Michael returned to the front passenger seat and instructed Russell to halt. They both waited.
‘Well that certainly distracted the driver,’ noted Russell. ‘We should check if he’s injured. What exactly did you do?’
‘Just my version of a taser. Shorted out the electrics in the harvester, but the driver should be fine in his insulated cabin.’
They continued to wait but there were no signs of life from the combine harvester.
‘Come to think of it,’ began Michael, ‘if his window was down and he was touching any part of the frame, he may have received a jolt… Maybe we should make sure he’s alright. Proceed ahead – slowly! – do not drive over the crop circle!’
The Bentley edged up behind the harvester and stopped. Still no movement; it was less than twenty metres from the edge of the circle. Michael and Russell gingerly approached the cab and both were shocked by what they saw.
‘Holy crap, it’s Gerry!’ exclaimed Michael.
The slumped and motionless form of Gerry sat in the cab, his head resting at an odd angle against the steering wheel. It did not look good.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Russell.
Gerry began to groan.
‘No,’ replied Michael. ‘We should get outahere before he spots you.’
‘Tebb!!’
‘Too late! Get in the car!’
‘Tebb!! What have you done? What have you done to the combine? You’ll pay for this!!’ Gerry jumped from his cabin but, still clearly disorientated, he stumbled and fell to the ground. ‘Tebb!! I will skin you alive for this! Where are you fucking going!?’
Russell and Michael raced back to the Bentley and drove with great haste from the field.
‘At least we saved the segment!’ remarked Michael, as they returned to the tarmac roads. ‘The old Bentley’s going to need a bit of work, though! Did you notice the front grill?’
‘I can’t say I did, Michael,’ replied Russell, still frazzled.
‘Good, don’t. It’s not pretty. Don’t worry, though: I’ll soon panel-beat it back into shape!’
Russell became aware of the Bentley’s great speed as it hurtled through another blind bend. He made a deliberate effort to slow down.
‘I can’t believe Gerry was driving that thing!’ he remarked, after regaining some composure.
‘I know! What are the odds, eh?’ replied Michael.
‘I mean I can’t believe he would just blithely mow that thing down after spending god-only-knows-how-many hours constructing it!’
‘Yes! Just goes to show the level of control your collective unconscious exerted on young Gerry. He’s probably barely aware that he made it now!’
‘It would’ve saved us a lot of trouble if this control had been maintained for just a bit longer.’
‘Ah, well, that’s why they call it “the collective unconscious” – it might have great mental power but it’s dumb at the tactical level. It would never have seen this coming.’
The Bentley overtook the group of cyclists encountered earlier and Russell made sure that he missed them and as a consequence almost hit a car that appeared suddenly ahead.
‘Shit! …This is so not the right car for these roads.’
‘Not with you behind the wheel, no,’ replied Michael. ‘Anticipate!’
‘Yeah, whatever…’ Russell took the speed down still further and checked his rear-view mirror.
‘Worried Gerry is bearing down on us?’ enquired Michael.
‘Do you think he’ll come after us?’
‘I think he’ll come after you, yes.’
‘Yeah, well, so what? It had to be done. By the way: do you still have a drone over the field?’
‘Hmm hm,’
‘And!?’
‘Gerry is attempting to restart the harvester.’
‘Any joy?’
‘Nope. That thing’s fried, It’ll need replacement parts: ergo, our crop circle is safe until noon at least.’
The Bentley began a winding descent towards the Red Lion and passed by the “Third Eye” field; Russell noticed that it, too, was in the process of being harvested.
‘The combines are out in force today,’ he remarked.
‘It’s the weather, init,’ replied Michael. ‘Too many more days like this and the crops will all be turning to dust. Crop circle season is certainly over now, anyway.’
‘Hmm, have you amalgamated the three segments yet?’ Russell enquired, nervously.
‘I told you, we need to wait till noon. But yes, I have had a glance.’
‘And?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Gibberish?’
‘Looks that way, but, I reiterate: the stems appear to be positioned deliberately and on an individual basis – in fact, the whole thing has been made to such a high level of precision that parts one and two actually lined up perfectly! And I mean: perfectly. No discontinuity! Remarkable! The shadows cast appear to be part of the matrix as well, hence the requirement for the sun to be in the same position and as close to the zenith as possible. So let’s wait until midday before we start bulk-buying bananas, okay?’
‘Fine!’
The Bentley duly arrived at the Red Lion’s car park; apart from the dozen-or-so parked cars, it was deserted.
‘Good, no sign of ma’am,’ observed Michael, ‘gives me a chance to mend the Bentley before she witnesses the damage.’
Both Russell and Michael alighted and inspected the front grill. Michael let out a whistling sound and rubbed a forepaw against the top of his head. The front of the Bentley was badly mashed up; it was a wonder the thing still worked. Fluid dripped from somewhere.
‘What’s that?’
‘Brake fluid. I’ll get it sorted. Why don’t you keep ma’am busy while I do this?’
‘Sure,’ replied Russell, half-heartedly, not particularly keen on the idea of facing Ceres at this moment, and besides, she was probably off frolicking somewhere with the future Mrs. Tebb. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about Ceres,’ he said.
‘And what would that be? Pop the bonnet, would you?’
Russell returned to the car and activated the bonnet mechanism. This prompted more whistling from Michael as he surveyed the interior.
‘If she is all life on Earth–’
‘There’s no “if” about it – she is.’
‘Right, well, surely the human collective unconsc
iousness–’
‘Collective unconscious,’ corrected Michael.
‘Yeah, that. Surely it is part of her… matrix?’
‘Her what!?’
‘You used the word “matrix” just before!’
‘Yeah, to describe the crop circles!’
‘Okay, whatever the word is: it is a component of her.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Why all this palaver!? Why doesn’t she just know already!?’
Michael scuttled around to the boot and retrieved a large tool box; he then returned to the front of the car and began examining its contents. ‘You make the mistake of assuming her true thought processes occur on your human timescales.’
‘Huh?’
Michael scrutinized a monkey wrench before returning it to the tool box. ‘You don’t really get the concept of the gestalt, do you?’
‘Well, I–’
‘Precisely! I thought not! We’re talking about Earth’s biosphere here. If it wants to evolve a new species, for example, it takes millions of years. You call it “natural selection”. The biosphere calls it “thinking”.’
‘I’m still not with you,’ replied Russell, genuinely bamboozled.
Michael stopped what he was doing and faced Russell: ‘The biosphere thinks deeply – but it thinks slowly. It can’t really deal with an unforeseen crisis, like, say, an alien threat. By the time it even recognizes there is a problem the aliens will have done whatever it is they intended to do. So there is a requirement for something else.’
‘The gestalt?’
‘Now you’re getting it!’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes. The gestalt thinks in what you might call: “real-time”. Its job is to take care of shit like the Sponsors. And it’s bloody good at it!’
‘I’ve noticed!’
‘Thanks! I’ll assume that compliment extends to me as well.’ Russell nodded. ‘But the gestalt has to convert “the many” into “the one” so as to function. Having achieved this miracle – and it is a miracle – it is not then well placed to examine, as you put it: “a component” part of itself. It’s all about bringing its components together, not separating them out again… Are you still with me? You’re looking confused, not that that tells me much – you always look confused.’
‘I think I am getting it now. The gestalt is to the biosphere as my conscious mind is to my unconscious mind.’
Michael made a loud exhalation noise to signify that the analogy was far from perfect. ‘I suppose that will have to suffice, yes. The gestalt is aware of the human system within itself, but, as ma’am explained earlier, it has to go through the correct channels for there to be an exchange of meaningful information. And that process has been occurring these past few days! It’s a sort of meditation I guess, to use your flawed analogy.’
‘Hmm, except the information you are receiving seems to be falling short of “meaningful”.’
‘That is a bit of mystery, I have to admit. It looks as though something might have gone wrong.’
‘Can’t you repeat this exercise? You know, do another crop circle?’
‘And get the same result, probably. There’s also the combine harvester issue. Unless you’d have me taser them all!’
Russell shrugged: ‘So what’s gone wrong, then?’
‘Dunno. Like I said, it is a mystery.’
The car park, situated as it was in a natural bowl that focused the sun’s heat, was no place to hang-out for any length of time. Russell left Michael to make his repairs and reluctantly sought out Ceres.
The interior of the hotel provided some blessed relief from the developing heat of the day. Several of the patrons relaxed in the bar or in the lounge; Celia Browning and a handful of croppies studied pictograms in the communal hall; but there was no sign of Ceres. Russell returned to the bar and ordered a pint of lager; he sat upon one of the barstools, next to Mr. Waterstone who was gazing, glassy eyed, into space. He waited, restlessly – eyeing the clock at regular intervals.
***